For twenty years I've been buying fabrics and yarns, all the while daydreaming about the beautiful and perfectly coordinating wardrobe I would make. It is time to put in the sweat, blood and tears that will make this happen...

The pattern is an oldie but goodie: Vogue 1915 by Anne Klein. As you can see in the technical drawing, the blouse is shaped with a triangular piece at the sides. The bottom third then flares out forming a peplum.

This is my second version of this blouse. My first version of this blouse fitted just fine but was ruined by a very, VERY poor choice of interfacing. Armed with this painful experience, I chose an embroidered cotton for this new version. The all-over embroidery gives the fabric quite a lot of body, so I skipped all interfacings this time. Avoiding the problem is also a way of resolving it, no?

The pattern calls for self lining, but that would just be silly with this fabric. Much too stiff and probably scratchy against the skin. Instead, my thrifty self immediately thought to re-use the lining of the first version. I looooved that soft cotton voile, so I'm very glad that I could rescue at least half of it to use it in this new version.

I have to tell you that at first I was worried that this re-use would break the rules of the SG 2014 SWAP. After all, the lining was already constructed some 10 years ago (eep!). But freeing the lining from the old blouse took soooo much time, removing all that topstitching and stitching and then carefully keeping all the clipped edges from fraying. Ugh! Let's just say more than once I thought to just forget it and make the lining from scratch. But I persevered and now I am very glad that I did. The soft voile is so silky against the body; My skin has no clue there is all that embroidery going on.

Just as with the first version, I shortened the peplum by a good 8cm to a length that I find more flattering on my pear body. Independent of how long you make the peplum however, this is definitely a blouse to wear with a high-waisted bottom since the peplum is shaped to open up beyond the lowest button. Yup, that's my belly button peeking through, sorry about that!

If I want to be really picky then I have to mention a mistake I made: because the blouse is not self-lined, at the neckline you can see the cotton voile just under the collar, when the revers open up a bit. I didn't think about this at all until the blouse was fully constructed. Sigh... so now it is just a feature. No-one else will notice, right?

About Me

I am a fabricholic with an enormous stash accumulated over 20+ years. I finally have a dedicated sewing room so I've run out of excuses. This blog is a means to find the discipline I need to make my dream wardrobe a reality!